Adam Thirlwell: Politics: A Novel (P.S.)
One would think this book is about sex, And while it is, since the characters have so much about it, some of it is kinky, and threesomes play a big role in the narrative. mostly POLITICS is about everything else: the mechanics, the logistics, the emotional minefields, the awkward questions, the moral dilemmas, and, well, the politics of what it is to be with someone you love or someone you don't, and how an act that should be simple is anything but. Thirlwell was disgustingly young when he wrote this but he absolutely understands that to make this book work, there must be an underlying sweetness and sincerity to the entire story. Now I want to see what he's up to more recently.
Amazon | Indiebound | B & N | Borders | Powell’s
Jennifer Mascia: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir
Years ago I was blown away by Mascia's Modern Love piece describing her parents' secret past: her father was a mobbed-up convicted murderer, and her mother not only knew all about it, but aided and abetted her husband when life required being a fugitive, selling drugs, and living at great highs and crushing lows. Mascia's book tells a more whole story about her peripatetic life, and even with every new shocking revelation what remained consistent was how much she loved her parents, no matter how deep those lows went, and how much she misses them now that they are gone. Unconditional love never goes away, no matter if those who receive it deserve it.
Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N | Powell’s
Juli Zeh: In Free Fall
Give me a novel of ideas and if the story is good and the characters are believable and entertain me, I am there. Give me a crime novel of ideas, where two physics professors, friends and rivals, opposites but startlingly similar, do emotional battle on an intellectual canvas, raise the stakes through betrayal, the possible kidnapping of a child, and embroil a romantic-leaning police detective in the complicated machinations of quantum theory, and holy hell, I think I have myself one of my favorite books of the year.
Powell’s | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N
Simon Lelic: A Thousand Cuts
It appears to be a crime with an easy solution: a disgruntled schoolteacher shoots up his place of employment and kills several students in the process. But really, Lelic's novel is about the catastrophic consequences of bullying, and how this act is hardly limited to kids turning on other kids, but burrows deeply into adult relationships as well. He evokes empathy for the killer and sympathy for Lucia, the investigating officer who has to fight for every scrap of dignity as she pieces together the far more complex truth of what really happened at the school.
Powell’s | Amazon | Borders | Indiebound | B & N
William Lindsay Gresham: Nightmare Alley
I cannot stop raving about this book to people. The circular narrative structure, the demented feel of a traveling carny troupe, and the extraordinary rise and precipitous fall of Stan Carlisle give off the persistent, raging feeling that hell is always with us, and success is basically a sucker's game. No matter what the biographical evidence on Gresham's state of mind leading up to and after the book's bestseller (and movie basis) status in 1946, I don't think we can really know what demons plagued him to produce this marvelous noir gem.
B & N | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | Powell’s
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...and maybe a nod to the film Tootsie? Yikes, I wonder what's out there that sounds like my soon-to-be-published masterpiece?
Posted by: ro harris | July 05, 2007 at 01:44 PM
Or maybe you're thinking of Eric Garcia's faux chick lit book from a few years ago, Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys.
Posted by: tod goldberg | July 05, 2007 at 06:09 PM
Colin Bateman wrote abook about a writer who does a book under a woman's name and then hires an acctress to play the author. I'm spacing the name at the moment.
Posted by: Jon Jordan | July 08, 2007 at 12:51 PM
Not only have you read it last year, but probably ten times in the past 5 years and more than a few times as a made for TV movie. I just saw a rerun a few nights ago called Good Advice and then there was the new one with Christy Alley ....this theme is so overdone. Now when an agent says that this proposal or book crossess genres and thus cannot sell or that it is "TOO UNIQUE" writer just have to keep writing the same thing over and over again. Now that's a creative art!
Posted by: Lyn leJeune | July 08, 2007 at 04:57 PM
It will be hard to beat Colin Bateman's Chapter and Verse, which was hilarious.
Posted by: Karin M | July 13, 2007 at 11:29 PM